


a whiskey lullaby

by BadWolfGirl01



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Character Death, Depression, Drinking to Cope, Emotional Hurt, Everyone Needs A Hug, Excessive Drinking, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Heavy Drinking, Hurt No Comfort, Inspired by Music, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Not A Fix-It, Please Don't Hate Me, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad Ending, Soldiers, Songfic, Suicide, This is not a nice fic okay, Triggers, and also some therapy, and so please leave me kudos?, because i'm honestly really getting kinda worried about it, canon-typical angst?, i'm actually really happy with this, okay does anyone actually like this?, the grief does not resolve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 17:44:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11422956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadWolfGirl01/pseuds/BadWolfGirl01
Summary: It neverwasgoing to work out, in the end; they’d both known that from the very start.But somehow, they both managed to forget it.





	a whiskey lullaby

**Author's Note:**

> lyrics are from "Whiskey Lullaby" by Brad Paisley and Allison Krauss. Highly recommend listening to it before reading, or after reading, or while reading...

It never  _ was _ going to work out, in the end; they’d both known that from the very start.

But somehow, they both managed to forget it.

~~~~

_ She put him out like the burning end of a midnight cigarette _

_ She broke his heart _

_ He spent his whole life trying to forget _

~~~~

He’s Mexican, she’s British; they both flee to America for reasons of their own and end up in the Army, deployed overseas, fighting a war against terrorism that never seems to end. They meet in the middle of an attack, their unit pinned down by heavy fire; she saves his life and he saves hers, and they make it out alive.

They’re the only ones that do, though, and both of them must live with the guilt of that for the rest of their lives.

(Later, Cassian will talk about how he saw his friend Melshi being taken away, a prisoner of war, and Cassian just watches it happen like a film in slow-motion, the scene illuminated by flashes of grenade fire, and doesn’t help.)

It isn’t the first time he’s been the only survivor. War is hard; sometimes people just get lucky. (He doesn’t  _ feel _ lucky.)

He’s twenty-three when he finally gets to come home, and he’s killed more people than most anyone could comprehend, done worse things than some of the prisoners who’d be on Death Row; who exactly is he supposed to talk to now? What is he supposed to  _ do _ with what’s left of this life of his?

He asks Chirrut Imwe that one day, sitting at the bar in front of the open kitchen in Chirrut’s Chinese restaurant.

“You should go through your uniform pockets,” the older, blind man says with a mysterious smile. “You might find something that helps.”

Over in the corner of the kitchen, Baze Malbus--Chirrut’s husband--scoffs audibly, but doesn’t actually  _ say _ anything, which Cassian takes to mean that it’s actually a decent idea. So he shrugs and pays for his order and returns to his small, barren flat and pulls out the box he keeps his things in (except his dog tags--he never takes those off).

It’s in the pocket of one of his shirts that he finds the scrap of paper with a phone number and a note scrawled on it:  _ for when you need someone to talk to. J.E. _

He picks up his phone and calls the number.

  
  


Jyn Erso is a wildfire, burning everything that gets too close; but somehow, Cassian is an exception. She’s the only one who truly  _ understands _ what he sees at night, the movie that plays on his eyelids; it’s not a surprise to anyone (except maybe Kay, but Kay really doesn’t  _ like  _ Jyn) when they fall in love. She moves into his flat, her old flatmates Leia and Bodhi promising to keep her room for her. Cassian doesn’t miss the way they offer, the way they look at the two of them; he knows what they’re thinking.

_ They aren’t going to last. _

He doesn’t care.

 

Cassian gets a job at the local police station with ease; Bodhi gets Jyn some work at an airplane mechanic ( _ I like to fix broken things _ , she’d said). They deal with their demons the only way they know how: with work, and with each other, and sometimes it just isn’t enough. Sometimes, true love’s kiss doesn’t solve the problem, doesn’t make the monster go away (how can it when the monsters are  _ themselves _ ?). Jyn picks fights with him, yells and screams and rages until she’s almost in tears, and then storms out in a huff to spend the night at Bodhi and Leia’s place; he gets it, he really does, and so he takes the shouting and the anger and passes a sleepless night alone in his bed, tossing and turning and waiting for her to come home.

She always does--come home, that is--sometime the next day, but he can tell how much she feels like a dog slinking home with its tail between its legs, so he starts meeting her at Chirrut and Baze’s on those days; they share an order of wontons and whatever else Baze cooks up and chat about nothing, and her quiet smiles are all the apology he needs.

They are opposites: Jyn is a fire, burning and hot, lashing out at everything--destruction the only way she knows how to release her feelings; Cassian is  _ ice _ , cold and quiet (that’s what makes him such a good sniper), internalizing everything, tucking his emotions behind a wall in his mind (too afraid, now, to look behind it and see what’s there). He  _ understands _ the fights, knows why she lashes out, but that doesn’t mean it hurts less when she leaves (it hurts more and more every time); he puts the pain away, day after day, puts it where he tries to chain up his demons, and tries to ignore it. After all, he doesn’t  _ want _ to talk about his ‘feelings’. His emotions didn’t help him survive the war.

“You never  _ talk _ ,” Jyn says one night, leaning against the arch between the living room and kitchen, watching him cook dinner. 

“I talk all the time,” Cassian answers back, confused. “Like right now--I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

“You talk and talk and you never  _ say _ anything,” she clarifies.

He turns to look, unease heavy in his gut.

“Did the war really end so easily for you? Can you really just put everything you don’t want to feel in a bottle and drop it in the ocean somewhere?”

“Jyn,” he starts, leaving the stove to come to her.

She backs away quietly, shaking her head, those deep green eyes soft and liquid like he’s never seen before--so very vulnerable. “Cassian, do you  _ trust _ me?”

He takes a step back in shock. “I--”

( _ Of course I trust you, _ he wants to say.  _ I love you, Jyn. _

But the words won’t come.)

She waits in silence while he opens and closes his mouth, searching for words; then her eyes harden into steel. Her voice, though, is heavy when she says, “Right.”

The fight that follows is like none other. He tries to reassure her--she accuses him of lying--he says he’d never lie to her.

“How do I  _ know _ ?” she shouts, and her eyes  _ bleed _ . “How do I know you haven’t been lying to me all this time?”

( _ Because I love you _ , he doesn’t say.)

“Do you trust  _ me _ ?” he asks instead, and his voice  _ cracks _ , like a whip, parodying her words right back at her.

“Maybe I  _ don’t _ !” she hisses out, low and furious.

He goes cold, then, a tight anger mixed with all the pain and rage he’s been trying to hold back for so long. “Then maybe I should’ve left you back in the war.”

She leaves without another word.

(He sits alone at the table, later, picking at a dinner made for two, and tries to feel something,  _ anything _ . 

There’s nothing to feel. Just hollow, empty ice.

He didn’t mean it.

_ She’s the one who started it, _ a voice whispers in the back of his mind.  _ It’s her fault. _ )

  
  


Jyn doesn’t come home the next day--Sunday--and by the time he has to head into the station Monday morning, she’s still not texted asking to meet; he tries to keep her off his mind, but she’s all he can think about at work, and it’s noticed.

“It’s Jyn Erso, isn’t it,” Kay Tuesso says, and on his lips the words ‘Jyn Erso’ sound like some vile swear. “That woman is  _ ruining _ you.”

“I think the mob ruined me a long time ago, Kay.”  _ When they killed my parents, _ he doesn’t say. He doesn’t  _ have _ to say. “And what the mob didn’t, the war did. I’m more fucked up then you know. But it isn’t because of Jyn.”

“What did she do this time?” Kay asks with a heavy sigh.

“We fought,” Cassian admits. “It was a bad fight. I said something I shouldn’t have--I didn’t mean it, I really didn’t, but she left.”

“When?”

“Saturday night,” he says with a rough exhale. “And she hasn’t come back. Kay…”

“Give her tonight,” his oldest friend suggests, “and then, if by the time you get off work tomorrow she hasn’t texted you, go to Bodhi’s place and grovel.”

“I don’t  _ grovel _ ,” Cassian mutters.

“Do you want her back?”

He doesn’t have an answer for that one.

Kay smirks. “I’d like a video of this.”

“ _ Not a chance _ .”

 

Leia answers the door Tuesday night and swears.

“Bodhi!” she calls over her shoulder, then stands firmly in the door, stretching up to the full measure of her (small) height. “ _ Shit _ . Hey, Cassian, it’s nice to see you, but--”

“I’m here to see Jyn,” he says simply. (In his hands is a bouquet of flowers and there’s a small box burning a hole in his pocket, and he’s finding it hard to breathe from the nerves.)

“Yeah, I gathered, but right now is really  _ not _ a good time…”

“Cassian!” Bodhi says with a wide (nervous) grin far too large for his face. His eyes dart everywhere, avoiding Cassian’s face. “Hi! Haven’t seen you in a while, how are y-you?”

Cassian frowns at the tremor in the pilot’s voice. “I just want to see Jyn, please,” he says slowly. Neither of them move. “I’m here to speak to my  _ girlfriend _ ,” he snaps out, a little more harshly than intended; Bodhi flinches, but Leia stands steady.

“I’m sorry, but now is  _ really _ not a good time,” the young woman says gently. “Maybe tomo--”

Whatever else Leia has to say is cut off by a soft, breathy laugh. A laugh he knows well.

(It’s  _ his _ laugh, he’s the only one who gets to hear it.)

“Move,” he growls out, holding himself still with an effort.

Leia is a fierce, brave woman, but even she knows when to step aside.

She moves.

Cassian walks quietly down the hallway and opens the door he knows is Jyn’s, words already on his lips (hoping he was wrong). “Jyn, I--” he starts, and then stops.

Jyn,  _ his _ Jyn, is half-naked and pressed against the wall by another man.

(His vision blanks out, going white, something roaring in his ears, and he can’t breathe)

“Cassian,” she chokes out, her eyes wide and horrified, “oh my god,  _ Cassian _ .”

The roses fall from his numb hands; he thinks Bodhi is behind him, restraining him, and he almost laughs because he doesn’t  _ need _ to be restrained--and then Jyn’s-- _ lover _ smirks and the monster inside Cassian wakes up.

He doesn’t make a sound--doesn’t have to; just stares the other man down with death in his eyes, and maybe it’s a good thing Bodhi’s here after all.

(His hands  _ itch _ for his gun.)

And then Leia’s in front of him, tugging him away, and tears are streaming down her face--she’s saying something, probably an apology, but he cannot hear over the roaring static in his ears--and he lets her lead him back into the living room and then he jerks away and stumbles through the front door, slams it shut.

(He stands there for a moment, shaking, and pulls out the box, stares at the ring inside: white gold, the stone a chip taken from the crystal Jyn wears around her neck all the time in secret once, made into a ring he hasn’t had the courage to offer before. And then he shakes his head and closes the lid, tucks the small black velvet box back inside his pocket, and walks on.)

He walks to Han Solo’s bar, the Millennium Falcon, and drinks himself into oblivion.

~~~~

_ We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time _

_ But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind _

_ Until the night… _

~~~~

“He’s here every night,” Han tells Leia quietly, worried; he’s selfish, sure, but he  _ does _ care for those few he calls friends, and Cassian is one. “Drinks until he can barely walk and then staggers off to his flat. I wish I knew what to do to help him.”

“I’m not sure we can,” Leia murmurs back shakily. “This is my fault,” she whispers suddenly, her voice breaking. “If I’d just stopped him from coming in--if I could’ve just done  _ something _ \--”

“ _ Leia _ ,” Han says, using her name for once, “stop it. This is no one’s fault but Jyn’s. You did what you could to keep it from happening and it wasn’t enough, but you can’t blame yourself.”

“They’re my  _ friends _ , Han,” she chokes out, a tear rolling down her cheek. “I can’t just watch them self-destruct.”

Han swallows down the lump in his throat and pulls Leia close, the woman for once not fighting him; instead, she slips her arms around his waist and nestles against him, tucking her head beneath his chin. He tightens his hold and closes his eyes, letting out a shuddering breath.

How Cassian can stand it, he doesn’t know. Han guesses he’d either kill himself or the other man if he ever caught Leia with someone--and she hasn’t even let him  _ kiss _ her yet.

(If this is what love feels like, well, Han wonders why so many people are so desperate for it.)

  
  


Kay Tuesso does  _ not _ understand why Cassian is so enamored with Jyn Erso.

But that doesn’t mean he’s about to let his oldest friend drink himself to death over that woman.

Kay is, however, rather annoyed that he was forced to get the story from  _ Bodhi _ , of all people. He makes his mind up to inform Cassian of this remarkably large oversight on his behalf the next time he shows up to work--and then decides that perhaps he will take pity on Cassian and confront him later, in a less public place.

This less public place ends up being the Falcon, the bar that Cassian frequents. “Cassian,” Kay starts, approaching the other man, “I’m  _ perturbed _ you did not feel the need to tell me what went on with Jyn Erso.”

(Idly, Kay wonders if his face looks perturbed. He spent some time practicing the expression before this confrontation and liked the way it looked--it would be  _ such  _ a shame to waste the opportunity to use such a good expression.)

“And I,” Cassian says simply, over-enunciating his words until each one is clipped and short, “am  _ perturbed _ you told me to go confront her.”

And with that, the conversation is quite over, apparently, for Cassian turns back to his whiskey.

For once, Kay is completely speechless.

  
  


“Something happened,” Chirrut tells Baze when Cassian walks into the restaurant.

Chirrut is  _ usually _ right, somehow, but Baze is still skeptical. “How do you know?”

“I can feel his grief,” and then, “he  _ stinks _ of whiskey.”

“Wontons?” Baze asks when Cassian sits in his normal seat.

Cassian shakes his head. “ _ Anything _ but wontons,” he says instead. “And whatever the strongest liquor you have is.”

After a few glasses of whatever the hell Chirrut found in the depths of their storeroom, Cassian’s loosened up enough to tell the story in halting sentences.

“We--fought,” he starts slowly, and takes a gulp of his alcohol. “I said something I shouldn’t have, she left, didn’t come back--Kay told me to go by Bodhi and Leia’s place after work and talk to her. I went by, I had flowers, I took the ring,” he adds, shooting Baze a meaningful look; Baze nods, remembering the ring. He and Chirrut have been trying to get Cassian to propose for a while now. “When I got to their flat--Leia didn’t want to let me in, tried to get Bodhi to help, but I forced my way in. She was in the bedroom. With--” He stops, drains his glass (Baze promptly fills it up again), heaves a breath. “With her tongue in another man’s mouth. So I left.”

“Have you tried speaking to her?” Chirrut asks thoughtfully, sipping a mug of tea. “Misunderstandings happen.”

“There’s no misunderstanding what I  _ saw _ ,” Cassian says, and that is that.

Baze gives Cassian another glass of liquor and tries to hide the ache he feels at the sheer grief in the younger man’s eyes.

~~~~

_ He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger _

_ And finally drank away her memory _

_ Life is short but this time it was bigger _

_ Than the strength he had to get up off his knees _

_ We found him with his face down in the pillow _

_ With a note that said “I’ll love her til I die” _

_ And when we buried him beneath the willow _

_ The angels sang a whiskey lullaby _

~~~~

He cannot stop loving her.

He never  _ told _ her, never said it--and neither did she, so it must’ve been a sign. He  _ knew _ they weren’t going to last, back at the beginning, and yet here he is. So  _ wretched _ that even  _ Han _ won’t serve him anymore, how bad is that?

( _ it’s been three  _ years _ , Cassian, move on, _ a voice tells him.)

( _ i  _ can’t, he snarls back)

The problem with whiskey is that it almost seems to be too  _ much _ \--he sees the very things he’s trying to forget, painted on the underside of his eyelids when he sleeps, flashing on the walls of every room in the flat when he’s awake: there’s the mob hitmen bashing his father’s brains out and raping and murdering his mother and sisters shown in sharp silhouettes on the wall; grenades flashing and machine gun fire and so much blood, a man he knew once blown apart by a land mine, just another casualty of war; and everywhere there is Jyn, her face, her eyes, her smile, laughing, kissing him beneath a sprig of mistletoe, curled up next to him on the little couch, him chasing her out of the kitchen with a wooden spoon--

Cassian screams, suddenly, a hoarse yell of  _ pain _ and grief and so much anguish and  _ loss _ , and reaches into his pocket and pulls out the ring. “I love you,” he whispers, “I love you, I love you, I  _ love _ you,  _ I love you _ !” By the last time, he’s shouting loud enough for the neighbors to hear, but he doesn’t care (even though he knows they’re probably already calling Bodhi and Luke, Han and Leia--two couples brought together by his loss, and it would be funny if it wasn’t  _ his loss _ ), just leaps to his feet and locks the door, wedges a chair under the handle, goes back to the table.

The ring sits there, glittering vibrantly in the light, mocking him with its brightness; suddenly, Cassian cannot handle it anymore. With a roar of broken rage, he hurls the ring into the wall, listens to the sound of the stone cracking--

It triggers something in him, something awful and sharp-edged, and he kneels on the floor, scoops the ring into his hand and carries it back to the table, lays it down like the precious thing it is; his empty hands close around the bottle of dark amber whiskey and he lifts it to his lips, gulping it down, the liquor burning a trail of flame down his throat.

(He’s already drank more than half the bottle tonight, he really  _ should _ put it away, but…)

There’s a notepad by the end of the table with a half-written grocery list on it; Cassian tears off the top page and grabs the pen and scrawls out a barely-legible note, heedless of the teardrops staining the yellow paper.

_ I’ll love her til I die _

Another swig of whiskey and for a moment, he swears he can  _ feel _ her again, all around him--

It’s too much.

(He can’t stop  _ loving _ her)

He stumbles to the gun safe, the whiskey bottle in his left hand; types in the combination after a few drunken mistakes and gets the door open. His right hand closes over the beautiful old pistol Jyn gave him their first Christmas (she said it belonged to her mother, past tense, and a quick internet search revealed that Lyra Erso succumbed to cancer when Jyn was only eight years old); it’s loaded (all his guns are, always), of course, and he carries it and the whiskey bottle back to the table and sits down.

Then stands up again. He can hear footsteps, running up the stairs; his friends coming to keep him from doing something stupid, more than likely. Cassian lets out a drunken laugh. The only person who’s ever  _ truly _ been able to stop him is Jyn, and she’s the one who’s egging him on tonight.

There’s a bit of a conundrum when he realizes he can’t carry the gun, the whiskey, the note, and the ring all at once; it takes him a moment, but he hits upon the idea of just  _ finishing _ the whiskey, and it seems like an incredibly  _ brilliant _ idea so he does it and leaves the empty bottle on its side on the table, the note and the ring clutched tightly in his left hand.

(The irony of it, carrying the wedding ring Jyn didn’t want in the hand he would’ve put it on, isn’t lost on him.)

He sits down on the bed, puts the ring and the notepad on his nightstand (never hers, he leaves her side of the bed untouched, her things all still where she left them), and stares down the barrel of the gun.

It’s fitting, he thinks through the whiskey-colored haze, that this is the gun he chose.

_ Cassian, open the damn door! _ someone shouts; he thinks it might be Leia. She’s quite the spitfire, it’s no wonder she and Jyn are close friends.

Jyn…

Something flickers in the corner of the room, a shadow morphing into an oh-so-familiar form; Jyn walks out of the empty corner (he knows she isn’t real, or he  _ thinks _ he probably knows, or would in a more coherent state) and she’s  _ smiling _ at him, like all the good days, and he starts to cry.

“Jyn,” he whispers reverently, and she laughs and blows him a kiss. “ _ Jyn. _ ”

He takes off the safety, puts the gun to his temple, and pulls the trigger.

There’s a bang and a little bit of pain, and then blackness.

(He smiles.)

~~~~

_ The rumors flew but nobody knew how much she blamed herself _

_ For years and years she tried to hide the whiskey on her breath _

_ She finally drank her pain away a little at a time _

_ But she never could get drunk enough to get him off her mind _

_ Until the night…  _

~~~~

Jyn wants to scream, to throw things, to break something--but she  _ can’t _ , because this is entirely  _ her fault _ , and--

She knows she tries to fix problems by being destructive, she’s been that way for a long time. And she can’t destroy  _ herself _ .

But maybe, just maybe, she can  _ forget _ .

  
  


She learns from Leia what time it is that Cassian usually goes to the Millennium Falcon and schedules her visits to avoid him; she has no desire to face him, and the anger and pain she saw in his eyes. So she drags Leia and Bodhi down to the Falcon every night at a specific time, although Leia’s often already there, and tries to pretend there’s nothing wrong.

(Maybe she’s a little  _ too _ loud, enthusiastic; she probably drinks too much whiskey, but that’s not her fault. Han has  _ damn _ good whiskey.)

She drinks and she laughs and she drags Bodhi out onto the dance floor, night after night--and that’s how he meets Luke Skywalker, the cute blond in flight school, and after that Bodhi no longer is so resistant to coming down to the bar.

It hurts.

And Han and Leia still pick fights with each other, but it seems halfhearted at best and once she catches a glimpse of Han  _ comforting _ Leia, and it just makes the urge to scream stronger.

_ I’m grieving, not stupid, _ she wants to shout.

She doesn’t.

Months pass by; she barely remembers to show up to work most days, and she knows it’s only the knowledge of her situation and her friendship with Bodhi that lets her keep the job, but she doesn’t care. She only works because she needs the money for the alcohol.

And then Bodhi moves out, gets his own apartment to share with Luke; suddenly everything is quieter, and she hardly ever  _ sees _ one of her two best friends anymore.

(She starts drinking during the day, too. Her boss isn’t very happy about that one.)

And then Leia approaches her, almost a year after everything happened. 

“Jyn…” She hesitates, then smiles brightly ( _ too _ brightly, but Jyn doesn’t say anything). “Han asked me to marry him, and I was wondering if you’d be my maid of honor.”

“I--”

She stops, cocks her head to one side, considering. “I’ll have to leave the flat, won’t I?”

Leia looks sheepish. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that.”

“I’ll have to be sober. At the wedding.”

“Is that a yes?” Leia’s smile is genuine this time, lighting up her whole face, and she throws her arms around Jyn. “Thank you so much!”

  
  


The day of the wedding happens to be on her and Cassian’s anniversary.

(It was an accident, Leia says later, in tears; and it’s Leia, so Jyn believes her.)

But that means that it’s  _ her anniversary _ , not Han and Leia’s wedding, and the wedding is the very last thing on her mind as she curls up inside her tiny, one-bedroom apartment blaring obnoxious music to keep her mind from spinning and consuming liberal amounts of cheap whiskey.

(She feels awful, later, when she’s a little more sober; knowing she ruined the wedding  _ hurts _ . So she just drinks more and tries to cover it up.)

She keeps drinking, as the days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into months, and slowly she isolates herself from  _ everyone _ , lets the whiskey dull the pain into nothingness.

(She can’t stop seeing Cassian everywhere she looks--the whiskey may help with the pain, but it can do nothing for the memories.)

~~~~

_ She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger _

_ And finally drank away his memory _

_ Life is short, but this time it was bigger _

_ Than the strength she had to get up off her knees _

_ We found her with her face down in the pillow _

_ Clinging to his picture for dear life _

_ We laid her next to him beneath the willow _

_ While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby _

~~~~

She doesn’t really feel anything when Cassian kills himself; she’s so empty inside, now. She’s even started to think about reaching out to her Papa--maybe he’d want to hear from her after so many years. She should tell him she loves him, that she doesn’t blame him for not being allowed to be a father; she never told Cassian she loves him, after all, and now he’s dead.

She types up an email that’s just five words long and sends it.

_ I love you, Papa. ~Stardust _

He doesn’t respond back right away, but that’s okay, because that’s when she hears from Leia that, other than a few kitchen tools and a bit of money for Chirrut and Baze, Cassian left her everything--including the flat.

She doesn’t quite know what to do about that, but she goes to the flat anyway, for the first time in three years; she can barely keep from sobbing as she walks through it, seeing all her things left lying exactly where she left them.

Then she walks into the bedroom and sees the notepad and the ring on his nightstand, and that’s when she loses it.

_ I’ll love her til I die _ is scrawled in Cassian’s messy handwriting, the yellow lined paper spattered with tears; and on top of it there’s a simple white gold ring. And even though the stone is cracked, she recognizes it immediately as a piece of her crystal necklace.

She picks it up, turns to Leia.

“When--when did he get this?” she chokes out through her tears, and her voice doesn’t even sound like her own.

“A few months before everything happened,” Leia murmurs quietly, sadly. “He never could work up the courage to ask, though.”

“I can’t do this,” Jyn says, then, and with the ring clutched tightly in her palm she flees out the door and into the night.

 

_ From: Galen Erso _

_ Subject: Re: it’s me _

_ Stardust, what’s wrong? What’s happened? It’s been  _ years _ since you last spoke to me, and I’ve missed you greatly. I’m traveling to the States next week for a conference near you. I’d like to see you, if I may. _

_ I love you. _

_ Papa _

She doesn’t respond right away, just stares at her phone screen and tries to think of what to say.  _ I went to war, met a guy, fell in love with him, then ran away and drove him to suicide and now I can’t stop drinking _ doesn’t exactly seem to be the kind of thing you say over email; so for the first time in her twenty-four years of life, she doesn’t answer her father.

 

She pulls out a bottle of whiskey and drinks until it’s gone, and then she closes her eyes and takes a shuddering breath.

There’s a picture of her and Cassian together on the wall; she stands and crosses the room to take it down, brings it back to her bedroom and slumps on the bed, leaving her phone on the table. In the picture, Cassian’s spinning her around on the Falcon’s dance floor; her cheeks are flushed and her smile lights up her entire face, and Cassian stares down at her with reverence and worship in his eyes, so much love on his face she can hardly breathe.

She  _ misses _ him.

There’s a gun under her pillow, just in case someone ever breaks in--the apartment is in a bad part of town and she still has a soldier’s instincts; it’s loaded, like all her guns always are, and she pulls it out without a thought.

She’d give  _ anything _ to be with Cassian again.

Clutching the picture to her chest, she thumbs off the safety, lifts the barrel to her head, and pulls the trigger.

 

_ From: Galen Erso _

_ Subject: Re: it’s me _

_ Stardust? _

~~~~

_ La la la la la la la _

_ La la la la la la la _


End file.
